I just returned from hanging a bunch of drawings and paintings for a show over at Cafe (504) in Oakland, by Lake Merritt. The most interesting thing might be that there are a couple of preliminary drawings that I did for paintings that never got past the sketch stage. This is probably as close as they will ever get to being art.

Everyone there was exceedingly nice and I felt bad about all the negativity that I was bring in the door with me, but I am very uncomfortable with this sort of thing. When you put your work out there you put yourself out there.

People have a tendency to try to say nice things, but inevitably my fragile ego perceives some sort of slight and I begin the spiral down into a nice warm depression.

Whenever someone sees one of my paintings that has a vampire in it, usually there is some comment like "Oh! That's like on True Blood!"

YES! YES! YES! IT'S EXACTLY FUCKING LIKE THAT. 'B-GRADE TELEVISION SHOW' IS WHAT I WAS GOING FOR!

I understand that I'm not a great artist, and that vampires are exceedingly-hot pop-culture staples, and people aren't necessarily going to really understand what I'm trying to get at with my work, if there actually is anything, but why does the thing they use for comparison have to be the crappiest thing they can think of? "I like this one 'cause it's like the tee-vee!'

What was I saying... None of that happened at the cafe today. Everyone was lovely.

This is some life you've got.

When you're growing up, hardly anyone dreams of being a mediocre illustrator, but that's what I turned out to be. Also as it turns out, there's only so many times you can do an illustration featuring a person sitting at a computer with, literally, a question mark floating above their head and a puzzled look on their racially non-specific face before you want to kill yourself.

So I started creating more personal work in the hope of making something great before I die. Some days are certainly better than others, that's for sure.